God Calls Us Daughters Extravagantly Loved

By Kimberly G Johnson

The greatest journey of life is one where our deepest desires are met and our wildest dreams are possible. The One who takes us, holds us, guides us, and makes it possible has our very best interests at heart. He will not lead us to a place he is not. Nor will he ever leave us. He is the Father we have ye

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kimberly Gibson Johnson
• Release date: Jul 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781087998299

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

AFTERWORD

A STUDY GUIDE

GOD CALLS US

DAUGHTERS EXTRAVAGANTLY LOVED

GOD CALLS US

DAUGHTERS EXTRAVAGANTLY LOVED

BY

KIMBERLY GIBSON JOHNSON

God Calls Us: Daughters Extravagantly Loved

© 2019 Kimberly Gibson Johnson

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by

Gibson, Johnson & Company, Inc.

P.O. Box 250646

Atlanta, GA 30325

kimberlygibsonjohnson.org

Cover Design: Megan Fechter, Painted Parcels, www.paintedparcels.com

Editorial assistance: Leonard G. Goss, GoodEditors.com, www.goodeditors.com

ISBN: 978-1-0880-1766-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-0879-9829-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903335

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are from the New International Version edition, published by Zondervan Publishing House. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011

Printed in the United State of America.

Gibson, Johnson & Company, Inc., May 17, 2019

To the One and Only

Father God in Jesus Christ,

who loves us extravagantly

and calls us his own

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Daughters of the King

Daughters Extravagantly Loved

God Calls Us to More of Himself

God Calls Us to Remember

God Calls Us to Listen

God Calls Us to Trust

God Calls Us to Remain

God Calls Us to Praise

God Calls Us to Please Him

Thriving Daughters Follow Our Loving Father

A Study Guide

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my fellow sojourners, family members, and friends who have gone before, walked along beside, and stand with me as I write and share God’s story in my life. I am grateful for who you are to me and all those around you. You have profoundly affected the lives of so many, and God’s heart for his daughters and sons shines brightly through you and your stories. Your lives are full of the love and grace of our Savior, and they speak of him in remarkable ways, like caring for others, serving those in need, and honoring him as you share your lives.

To my daughter, Julie, I am eternally grateful for God’s great gift of you as my daughter. Although this book is not specifically about you, it is about us as the Father’s daughters for such a time as this. Thank you for encouraging me to write and share God’s story. And thank you for your understanding and kindness; you bless me and so many others by your kind and generous heart and spirit. I want to be more like you.

To my husband, Gray, who inspires me to live with courage and joy. You speak encouragement and love in greater measure and in more ways than you know. Thank you for your grace, which you give freely and generously.

To my son, Alan, whose heart, courage, and words of wisdom give me great joy. I am so privileged and honored to be your mother. Thank you for being a steadfast supporter.

And to Ben, my son-in-law. Your encouragement to share my passion means more than you know. Thank you.

To Megan Fechter, of Painted Parcels. Your enthusiasm for this book cover design is truly matched by your creativity. The heart of joy in your art is contagious. I am so honored and thrilled that you would work with me on this book cover to invite readers to know God and the love he has for his children. Thank you for the privilege of getting to know you.

I also want to thank my editor, Len Goss, of GoodEditors.com. I am grateful for your editorial and theological expertise and for the privilege of working with you again. You made me think a second book was possible. Your work as a theologian and your faithfulness to God’s Word give me great assurance that through this book I can share the deep heartfelt love of our Father God with all his sons and daughters.

For each of you I am eternally grateful for your lives and stories of the hope of Jesus Christ. This has given me immeasurably more than I could ask or imagine!

Now let me address my readers: I write to each of you, God’s children—those who already know the Father, but also those who have not responded to his pursuing love. I write to you, daughter or son, already in the church or in Christian ministry, yet who yearns for more. Your heart asks, Is this all there is? I also write to God’s children who feel there is no way that God loves you. You feel separated from him because you are struggling and in pain, or perhaps because you have rejected him. You ask, Does God really love me? Or, How is it that God shows his love? Or even, How could God allow such horrible things in my life? In reality, we all ask these questions or others like them at different points in our lives. The answer from our Father God and our Savior Jesus Christ is always, You are extravagantly loved. When we look for God, we know he is the one who loves us extravagantly and calls us his own.

PREFACE

DAUGHTERS OF THE KING

Through the Lens of the Inheritance of God

What is the lens by which we view life, the one for which we have been created and chosen for such a time as this? Is it through past shame and disappointment, or fear of either in the present or future? Or is it through the lens of the inheritance of a child of God, an heir and co-heir with Jesus Christ? The Lord gives us a new view, one of hope and victory, for now and eternity. Isaiah 61:7 assures us that Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours. This is a beautiful illustration of the Messiah and our inheritance as children of God.

The apostle Paul also describes the beauty of the hope poured into our hearts as receivers of God’s love when we follow him while also enduring trials as Jesus did:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Rom. 5:1-5)

Scripture says we will not be disappointed in hope; it is not deceiving, nor will it fail. We believe by the power of the Holy Spirit in us as his children.

When we fear shame or disappointment, we have either placed our hope in something other than Jesus Christ, or we believe a lie that there is something to fear in the form of shame or disappointment. Most often, our hope in things turning out as we expected becomes a lens by which we view life and God’s blessings. Our God is so much bigger than our hopes and dreams; he will not fail, and he always loves us and never leaves us. The lie the world would have us believe is that things turning out as we think they should is the good life; however, the prophet Isaiah said, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9). The truth is that God is sovereign, and he works out his purposes for his glory and our good so that the entire world will know him. He created us, knows us, and has a plan uniquely for us for such a time as this.

Fearing shame is another lie. We fail, but God does not. He offers us a clean slate through the death and resurrection of his Only Son, Jesus—our shame for his righteousness. Jesus washed away our sins, past, present, and future. We are in right relationship with God. To fear our sin is to be enslaved to it still. God has given us freedom to be tightly tethered to him instead.

Trusting the Lord in the midst of our disappointments and shame is the way for God’s children. When we trust him, hope becomes the lens through which we see all of life, including shame, disappointment, suffering, and trials. As sons and daughters of God, may we choose to view our days in his presence as the inheritance he has given, so much more than we hope, dream, or imagine.

Crossing Over to the Life He has Imagined for Us

As I listen to God’s instruction for the new day, I hear, Come. Wait. Watch. I know he has actively pursued me to listen, so I hear him, or notice small things that are of him, or remember things and people who have spoken truth and love into my life. It is in the waiting that he prepares me for what is next without my knowing what or who or when. But when it does come, I know God watched over me in the process and during the hard waiting. The preparation is not for naught when I see the very wonder of the divine watchful eye and loving hand.

It is in this relationship with the Almighty, the Creator, and the Savior that we find the very thing for which we seek—hope, beauty, love, treasure, dreams, and truth. When we listen, we know that for this new day, we continue to seek:

Cause me to come.

Show me the wonder of your great love.

Because … it is true of him. It is the essence of him. It is everything. I must come and be filled with God’s wonder.

The Next …

When we have come and waited and watched for him in our midst, we are attuned to his presence where he is where we are. It is in the present that we know he is. God comes in the present and reminds us of who he is. When he fills us with his wonder, we remember what he has done, and we know that wherever we are, we can rely on him. We can trust him with whatever is next.

The wonder …

It is through the wonder of his great love that we know who God is, and it is in knowing him that we receive the life he has imagined for us.

And oh, what a life he has imagined for us. Come, Wait, Watch. He has great wonder to show us. Jesus has come already. He is waiting for us. His watchful eye and loving heart and hand extend for us. Come. Receive the wonder of his great love.

Five Questions (for which the Creator and Savior Requires a Response)

Our almighty and merciful Creator and Savior, our heavenly Father God, loves us and pursues us as we live on planet Earth, so beautiful and full of his creation, including us. As the Lord mightily displays his majestic and complex intricate natural forms, he also knows us intimately and shows us his love. What is our response to the one who creates and sustains all, loves and pursues us, and knows us and our innermost desires and dreams, as well as our flaws and dark places?

When we acknowledge him as our Savior, he gives us all of himself in Jesus Christ. It is in the receiving of all he offers that we know him, believe him, and become the persons we were created to be for his glory and our good. The journey only begins with salvation, the beginning of life to the full. There is so much more from him who promised life to the full if we are willing to participate in his great calling on our lives. Will we respond with a yes to all of him, our Creator and Savior God?

What or whom are we going to seek as we live out our days here? Will it be to fulfill a dream or passion, satisfy a desire, perform good deeds, continue a generation, or lead an enterprise? Our almighty and sovereign Creator made us with a desire to create and to be filled. He requires a response from us.

If we acknowledge our Creator and Sovereign God, will we confess our rebellion and sin and our need for salvation? Our affirmative answer to this question gives us life in him for eternity. Yet, there are several questions for us if we are to receive the fullness of which Jesus spoke and the promises of God for those he saves.

Will we receive all of God — his unfailing love, his mercy, his presence, his rescue, and his promises? All he offers us?

Will we allow him to teach us from his Word by making our minds and hearts available? Will we get to know Him—who he is and what he has done for us?

As we receive him, will we make our hearts available to him and continue to make our hearts available as we walk with him?

If we receive what God has given through Jesus, we will have life to the full. During our days on this earth, he has given us the power of Jesus flowing through us, the love of the Savior in us, and the Truth written on our hearts. Are we going to live out his truth and grace in our lives? Will we truly believe and receive what he has given us in Jesus? Will we accept life as he imagined for us, life to the full?

INTRODUCTION

GOD CALLS US

DAUGHTERS EXTRAVAGANTLY LOVED

God’s Call on Our Lives Requires a Response

Not only does God call us his children, he also calls us by name to his anointing and plan for our lives as his own. His pursuing love is given freely to all he creates and he invites each one of us to his grace and truth. But his invitation requires a response. In failing to respond to the Creator of the universe and Savior of our souls, we have rejected his invitation. In his will to give us free will of our own, God does not coerce or force us, but he does not want even one to miss out on his grace and truth.

God fully loves his sons and daughters, and he promises never to leave us or forsake us. He does not change, and he always keeps his promises. When we receive his grace and truth as followers of Jesus, we become the Father’s sons and daughters. As we follow him with our lives, he provides his all, and our days and lives become a response to his unfailing love and truth.

God first loved us. His call on our lives requires that we make a decision, namely that we respond to his love. As we live our lives as God’s children, we not only know him, but he gives us a desire to please him, and to honor him with our lives.

Receiving as a Response

It has taken me quite a few years to learn some things about the nature of being a child of God. If you were to say that I am a slow learner, you would be right. When God calls us to become his children, he wants to be in relationship with us. By virtue of our being in relationship with the Almighty God of the universe, there are things one must know on face value. First of all, there is nothing that we can give our great God. He has it all. Also, there is nothing he does not know about us. He is all knowing. And then, there is nothing he would withhold from us as his children. God is faithful and true, loving and compassionate, and slow to get angry with us. Whether we choose to believe it or not, he enjoys us. After all, he created us to be in relationship with him, and his great joy is in loving us. Thus, in relationship with God, we must receive what he has to offer. It is all about receiving his truth and grace.

In order to live as followers of our Father and Savior God, we must receive the offer of his Son and thereafter receive his lead in our lives. With each decision we encounter, or fork in the road we take thereafter, we must receive divine direction, forgiveness, comfort, strength, healing, or victory. It is in our believing who he says he is and what he says he will do that we come to know him. He will give us the faith to believe as we step first into his grace and truth and then with each step to receive what he has to offer us. As we take each step, the effort we make must be in our trusting that He is all we need for life and walking this journey of faith with Him.

Living a Life of Praise is also a Response to His Great Love and Call

As daughters of the King who trust in the One True God, we must respond by offering ourselves to him. This active response of the heart motivated to love and share what we have been given is offering back what has been given to us. The walk of faith and our response to his truth and grace has momentum because it is collaboration with our God, the author of all. We want to please God by responding to his great love. We do this by living a life of praise; pleasing God is the means by which he continues to give us lives fully loved.

The book you now hold in your hands, Daughters Extravagantly Loved, is an account of God’s pursuing love and the unfolding journey when one receives it. Like no other, our Father God gives full and abounding life to his children. As sons and daughters, we must respond to God’s offer. It is in the receiving of all that God has to offer that a daughter of the King comes to know she is fully loved by our Savior, Father, and King of kings.

Daughters Fully Loved and the Lives to which God Calls Them—Lives to the Full

God created us to be in a relationship with him for his direction and objectives. When we say we have been created for God’s glory, this is what we mean. God is God, and there is no other; thus, we are made for his glory. An inherent part of being God’s children, God’s own people, is that through us he makes himself known to the world. This is an enormous privilege and honor, and it is also an exciting and fulfilling purpose.

Through the Bible, which has rightly been called God’s love letter to humankind, we learn of the journey God had in the past with the creation he called his own, including their trials, triumphs, wanderings, and wayward ways. We learn from Scripture about the fallen world and fallen relationships of our ancestors. We live in the same world. Still, God loves us unfailingly and pursues us with his grace and truth. God is still the God of the universe who has called each one of us to be His own for such a time as this.

Not only is God revealed through Jesus Christ to his people—unfaithful, doubting, and sinful as we are—he also meets us in our brokenness. It is in our broken places that God continues to show us the wonders of his love. He comes to show us our sin and then to give us his mercy in Jesus Christ, through whom we have salvation. And when we determine to accept heaven’s offer of truth and grace, the Sovereign God comes to dwell within us to continue pouring out his love on us. God’s heart is bigger than we can dream, and his plans for us are wilder than our imagination can summon. Such is the way the heavenly hound pursues us.

God offers his unfailing love, to which he requires a response. It is in responding yes to him that his children receive what God gives—transformation into the persons they are created to be, with the desire to live out the plans he intended for his purposes and his glory.

God’s heart keeps on giving to his children. Extravagantly loved by our Father God, we have his word on it, and his Holy Spirit to guide us in it:

• God’s love letter, the Bible, is our guide for living in a fallen world with fallen relationships

• God shows us his heart by meeting us in the broken places of our lives

• God gives us more faith as we respond by faith

• God works in us from the inside out when we receive his offer of love and truth (private transformation to public proclamation)

• Our lives become fulfilled as we acknowledge and live out who God is and whose we are (living to please and praise him)

Story of the Red Dress

Do you have a red dress story? After you read mine, please consider that you have a story to tell, one that has given you insight into your own life. We are not to hide our stories. And our stories are not for our own limelight, but for the reader or listener to know who God is and what he has done for us. Perhaps our stories will draw others to the truth they have not known, or to a deeper meaning they can apply to their lives.

My story is about a daughter who is hopeless and heartsick. She is riddled by shame and unrest because of the dysfunction in her family system, mostly as a result of a mother who needs to be the most beautiful and talented person in the room, and who is untiring in her resolve to be the center of attention. Not only does she possess the requisite beauty and talent, she is also driven to attain it by whatever means the moment presents, even at the insult or injury to her children. My story is not different from so many in that God uses the broken places in our lives to bring us to him, to know him, to know his truth, and for him to bring healing to our hopeless and heartsick souls. The story of the red dress is my awakening to certain themes in my life and how God uses them for his glory and our good.

The red dress became a symbol in my life for all the ways things were out of whack. Yet God used the theme for his purposes in ways I could not see until he showed them to me.

The gown my mother wore as mother of the bride on my wedding day was red and flowing and perfectly magnificent. I believe it had not consciously occurred to her that she was upstaging the bride (me). When I called this to her attention, she would not choose another dress to wear. Consequently, my mother became the most visible member in the wedding procession and the celebration thereafter.

The rejection of another, particularly your own mother, is difficult to say the least. The red dress incident was not the first time something like this occurred. But it became a revelation of something I did not want to face. I enjoyed my wedding day despite the glaring reminder of our human flaws.

Memory has a way of giving us fodder for unforgiveness, shame, and unbelief. But God has another plan for us if we will allow him to reveal it. In my case, it took many years of stuffing the memories back and searching for ways to make myself lovable, lovely, and significant in my own eyes. And, of course, these often-tried ways were not going to fill the hole in my heart where rejection and hopelessness thrived. In addition to the paradox of wanting to be significant and yet not wanting the spotlight on me (because I had seen what it brought out in my mother), I thought the problem was center stage and visible in a red dress. This was not true.

Shortly after we were married, my mother-in-law gave me a red dress for Christmas. It was beautiful, and she had chosen it for me. As a daughter-in-law in a new family, it was particularly meaningful. I felt chosen, loved, and lovely. God was at work even when I could not recognize him.

The red dress Mary gave me was also elegant, flowing, and beautiful. But I did not particularly feel beautiful in it. It was not the dress itself but what was going on inside of me. This is what happens when we are not ready to receive a gift. Receiving is not something many are comfortable with. Yet, this is the great grace God has in mind for us. We have to reach for the very thing that is being given and allow ourselves to receive it. In receiving God’s precious gift of a Savior, we become the very persons God had in mind in creating us. Wearing the red dress and having fully received it would have given me the very thing for which I was seeking, which was love and loveliness. God was there in Mary’s gift at Christmas.

I have had a few red dresses over the years, and it has taken time for the significance of the symbol to become apparent to me. The light God gives us in our stories is for the recognition not only of who we are, but also for who he is, what he has given us, and who he has created us to be. When God gives us a gift and we receive his gift, we are to wear it. It is in the wearing, the receiving of him, that we become who he has set us apart to be and also part of his greater story. We are not to believe the lie that we must remain hidden. Rather, we come to know the truth that we become visible for God’s story to be known. He does not have to give us a part in his great story, but he does. We need to receive the true gift and let it be as he has said: I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God (Isa. 45:5).

The red dress is a symbol to me of how God uses hard things and brokenness to bring his redemption to his children. The lie that the Evil One wanted me to believe so that I would remain hopeless and heartsick became the groundwork, the broken place, that God used for his purposes in my life and for others who hear the story of his pursuing love and plan for all of his creation.

I ask you as daughters of Jesus Christ, our King of all kings, to recall your story of God. Receive his story and wear Jesus for the entire world to see. That is how our lives can become lives to the full, lives for which we were created as he planned for his purposes.

CHAPTER ONE

GOD CALLS US TO MORE OF HIMSELF

Since ancient times no one has heard,

no ear has perceived,

no eye has seen any God besides you,

who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. (Isa. 64:4)

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. (Matt. 13:12)

God Calls Us to More

Viewing our journey of faith like a walk along the road, we take God’s hand wherever he leads. We live with him along the way as he teaches and we listen. It is beautiful and wonderful if we go with him in this way, but we rarely do. He knows all this, and still he loves us.

We are puny and unreliable on this journey of faith. We want our way and not God’s way. We believe, but only by struggling, that God can take us where we want to go. We know he is God and there is no other. Yet we have trouble allowing him to be our Father God and living in relationship with him as his children. The Father demonstrated his love for us and his desire to be in relationship with us through the ultimate sacrifice of his only Son, Jesus. In this, he made it possible for the creation to be in right standing with the Creator.

Are we still trying to be right with God? We want to get things right while we walk our own path and feel we have done something for God. God, however, requires only that we walk and live with him as our Father on the journey. When I use the word walk, I mean an active participation in a relationship with God the Father. For many of us, walking is still something we do to earn or achieve a relationship with heaven. But that is not what the journey is about at all.

I am a walker, and I love moving about in God’s creation. For me, this is a special time with God when I can breathe in and enjoy his handiwork in nature. Often, he demonstrates his love and teaches me. It is a wonder that we have the privilege to visit with nature’s Creator in this way.

Recently, God reminded me that I am his daughter. There is no earning or achieving this status. There is no manner of walking that makes me more or less his daughter. I am simply God’s daughter and I have inherited the status to walk with him. For all Christians, he is our Father, and we are his heirs.

As God continues teaching me about being his daughter, he has given me many things to ponder of late. Some seem to be questions, and some are reminders of who he is and what he has promised. As he writes his truth on my heart, he also peels away layer upon layer of what is not the inheritance of a daughter. He takes away the parts of me that keep me from him, whether it is self-protection, or my desire to be comfortable, or my need to be in control of my life. In peeling these things away, he has something good in mind: his best for us. Could it be we are not receptive to God’s best because we feel we are not worthy? And of course, we feel that way because in fact we are not worthy. Only God has made us worthy through the sacrifice of God the Son.

Some of our questions suggest we doubt God’s plan for us as his children:

o Who am I to be taught by him?

o Who am I to receive a word from God?

o Why would the Father reveal himself to me?

o Why would the Son rescue me?

o Why would Jesus die so I could be made right with God?

o Why would the Lord give me a clean slate over and over again?

The question God poses for us as his children is, If you really knew how much I loved you, would you live differently? Do we really know how much the Almighty loves us? And if so, what difference is that making in our lives? Knowing he loves us as he does is a quest that has turned into an incredible lesson on being God’s daughter. His Word shows us how to know him as our Father and what he intends for us, his children—including joy, laughter, and dancing—merely because he delights in us. He wants us to receive heaven’s riches, the riches of daughter of the King, God himself.

God calls us to more. He awakens us to more, to know him more and to know what it is to be his daughter. He wants us to cross the threshold instead of wandering alone on our journey. He wants us to receive fully what is on offer: life to the full. Will we cross over to experience what he has in mind, what love he has in his heart for us? Or will we stay back and keep our distance from the fullness so readably available in Christ Jesus?

It is overwhelming at times to glimpse the love of God. As God reminds us that we are his daughters and sons and that his love is real and abundant and not dependent on what we did or did not do, we perhaps understandably begin finding ways we are not worthy. At least that is what I do at times. Neither my head nor my heart was definitely ready for the wonderful plan God had for me. When we are not ready to receive the gift he has for us (in my case, the lesson of being his daughter), God knows and loves and waits for us. He hides us for a time, as he hid me, so he could pour out his love and assurance and allow time for rest and growth. He did not abandon his plan because I